Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

March 28, 2011

Music of the South

You are about to see a video clip of an important jazz film that hasn't been viewed by the general public in about 50 years. It's at the bottom of this post. Most people aren't even aware that the film exists, and the clip was put up yesterday on YouTube by Raymond De Felitta [pictured], director ofTis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris, City Islandand other superb films.

The video clip is one of six parts from Music of the South, a rare documentary that Raymond's father, Frank De Felitta, filmed in 1956 in backwoods Alabama for CBS. It's narrated by CBS newsman Charles Collingwood.

CBS commissioned the film for its Odyssey series, which aired on Sunday afternoons starting in the '50s and continued into the '60s. Back in '56, Raymond's father was brought to the sharecropper's remote home by Frederic Ramsey Jr., co-author of jazz books such as Jazzmen (1939). Ramsey also made field recordings of blues singers and country musicians for Folkways records in the 40's and 50's.

The film print is a bit dark because it has been around for some time. We're fortunate to even have this film, since Frank De Felitta grabbed it and others he made just as CBS was tossing out large amounts of archival material many years ago. Mr. DeFelitta went on to be a director, novelist and screenwriter. [Pictured, from left: Dick Cavett with Raymond De Felitta]

Raymond will be posting additional parts of this film (as well as others his father made) at his blog, Movies 'til Dawn.

So, without further delay, here's a segment of Music of the South (for part 1, visit Raymond's blog here)...

Thanks to you, Marc, and Mr. De Felitta for a revelatory slice of Blues and television history. The clip and complete documentary have special meaning for me; in 1969 and 1970 with two friends I tried to interest the three commercial networks (no PBS back then, and no cable programming) in a series of six hour-long works devoted to The Musics of the South, and I wrote a treatment for the pilot devoted to Louisiana's multi-varied scene. There was no discernible interest at the time. But I had no idea that a one-off program had been produced over a decade earlier. (In 1956, I was 13 years old, and we had moved overseas by the time the Odyssey program aired.)

Coincidentally, in 1970 I was also trying to sell in Hollywood the feature screenplay I had written on the life of Blues great Robert Johnson. I was likely the first to suggest that subject, but whatever the merits of the idea or script it too went nowhere. Anyone curious can find my 40-year-old screenplay posted serially in sort-of chapters at www.robertjohnsonhellhound.blogspot.com

Anyway, I'm very glad the documentary has surfaced and been generously released to the public. Hats off to all concerned!

About

Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a two-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Association's best blog award.